Environmental Science and Pollution Research

, Volume 23, Issue 17, pp 17689–17701 | Cite as

Quantitative evaluation of reactive nitrogen emissions with urbanization: a case study in Beijing megacity, China

  • Chaofan Xian
  • Zhiyun Ouyang
  • Fei Lu
  • Yang Xiao
  • Yanmin Li
Research Article
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Abstract

The rapid increase in anthropogenic nitrogen (N) load in urbanized environment threatens urban sustainability. In this study, we estimated the amount of reactive N (Nr) as an index of N pollution potential caused by human activities, using the megacity of Beijing as a case study. We investigated the temporal changes in Nr emissions in the environment from 2000 to 2012 using a multidisciplinary approach with quantitative evaluation. The Nr emissions presented slightly increasing during study period, and the annual emission was 0.19 Tg N, mainly resulting from fuel combustion. Nevertheless, the Nr output intensity resulting from inhabitants’ livelihoods and material production had weakened over the study period. The evaluation results showed that the environmental measures to remove Nr in Beijing were efficient in most years, suggesting that progress in mitigating the growth of the Nr load in this urban environment was significant. Further measures based on N offset are suggested that could help alleviate the environmental pressure resulting from anthropogenic Nr emissions. These could provide theoretical support for the sustainable development of megacities.

Keywords

Urbanization Reactive N Waste treatment Data envelopment analysis N offset Beijing 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Number 71533005 and G031202). We are grateful to Dr. Xuesong Guo and Dr. Rong Qi from State Key Laboratory of Environmental Aquatic Chemistry for their constructive suggestions on the earlier version of the manuscript. Thanks to two anonymous reviews and editor for their help in improving a previous of this manuscript.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

Authors and Affiliations

  • Chaofan Xian
    • 1
    • 2
  • Zhiyun Ouyang
    • 1
  • Fei Lu
    • 1
  • Yang Xiao
    • 1
  • Yanmin Li
    • 3
  1. 1.State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental SciencesChinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  2. 2.University of Chinese Academy of SciencesBeijingChina
  3. 3.School of Geographical SciencesSouthwest UniversityChongqingChina

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